


Semipalatinsk 21

by Ugly_Love



Series: Postcards [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Depressing Philosophical Musings/Comfort, Established Relationship, First Omnic Crisis, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Fall of Overwatch, slice-of-life, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 02:41:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9300485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ugly_Love/pseuds/Ugly_Love
Summary: During the aftermath of the First Omnic Crisis, Jack Morrison collects his thoughts in an abandoned soviet airship hangar.





	

Jack Morrison had only felt real despair once in his military career: in the aftermath of the first Omnic Crisis, the afternoon after a mass civilian hostage liberation on the Russia/Kazakhstan border that had lasted almost forty seven hours. The mission had gone to shit after nine hours of surveillance had revealed that the perpetrators weren’t rogue Omnics, just humans who had it in their heads to restart the God-Program, some kind of fanatic group who thought this was the divine reckoning, that humanity was meant to be wiped out. Unfortunately, that made it harder. Humans are far less logical.

The abandoned soviet-era airship hangar they’d been held in was almost eerily quiet after, a stark contrast to the chaos and fire of the gunfight that had ripped the place apart less than hour before. He sat on the steps of a balcony a few stories up, long since missing its barriers, looking across the vast room, the elephant-graveyard of tanks and machinery, untouched for decades, and out through the hole in the domed ceiling, into the endless plains of barren winter beyond.

He’d read in the brief that this entire area had been a Russian nuclear testing ground.

Sitting there on the concrete, with blood and Omnic oil turning brown and tacky on his hands, looking out at that cathedral to humanity’s destructive power, Jack felt so helpless he could cry.

Ever since humanity had evolved far enough to pick up a stick, they’d poured all their drive, creativity and intelligence into destroying each other. Clever enough to create atomic bombs and stupid enough to use them. These radioactive ruins were almost a hundred years old, and had anything really changed? For every life Jack saved, there were another ten that he couldn’t.

Maybe the Omnics should have won. God knows the earth itself would be better off for it. But that was just it, wasn’t it? It didn’t matter about the bigger picture, humanity’s selfish, primal urge to survive was too strong for logic to make any difference.

Jack himself knew that if he was forced to choose, despite his philosophising, he would always fight with the same, greedy, feral stupidity to save his own kind. He would burn down the entire Taiga Forest to save just three of the people he loved.

Jack flinched as boots scuffed the concrete behind him, ragged nerves screeching like rusted machinery as he jerked for his gun.

“It’s me. Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”

Gabe stood in the doorway, tac-gear smeared white with dust, looking as haggard as Jack felt. Hanging back. Giving him space.  
Jack eased his grip off his gun, ignoring the conscious effort it took, and exhaled.

“ ‘S fine. I’m just a bit... high strung.”

“Fuckin’ tell me about it.” Gabe sighed, crossing the space and sitting down heavily beside him, pulling his beany off. They sat in silence for a while looking across the apocalyptic stillness of the hangar below. Gabe let his knee knock against Jacks, and Jack grounded himself in the contact, despite the layers of Kevlar and carbon-fibre between them.

“Gabe exhaled a slow huff, finally looking over at him.

“You doin’ okay?”

“Yeah. No. I’m fine, I just...” Jack pulled his knees up, still not looking at him. “Sometimes I wonder if anything we’re doing makes a difference. We’ve thrown our whole lives into this, but…” He gestured vaguely at the desolation, “Is it all really worth it?”

“Big Questions, Jackie-Boy.” It might have been a tease, if they’d both had more energy. Instead, Gabe leaned back on his hands, looking up, considering. He was quiet for a while, and Jack let him think, and then-

“Yeah, today was a fuck-up. We lost nineteen civvies. We lost Brammer. But you know what we woulda lost if we hadn’t tried? Two hundred and forty six civvies, and a hard-copy of the God-Program. What I’m saying is, one man can’t get it all right. You can’t carry the world outta this on your own, Jackie.”

“I know” and he did, _logically_ , he did know, but-

He huffed a laugh, sudden and sharp, surprising them both.

“But I guess that’s war, huh? It’s hard not to feel useless when you see how hard we can fuck things up.”

Reyes scrubbed a hand over his shaved head, deflating. “Ain’t that the truth… shit, c’me’re.” He reached for him, finally breaching the gap between them, and Jack relaxed into his grip, letting Gabe pull him against his shoulder. He felt good; solid, not quite warm but getting there, and Jack wondered why he didn’t just wrap the man up in his arms as soon as he saw him in the doorway.

Jack put his hand on Gabe’s knee, rubbing his thumb over the soft junction between his armour. Gabe let out a long, low breath, warm against his hair, and Jack ghosted a smile, glad he could give comfort as well as taking it. 

They sat like that for a while, not counting the time pass, not counting anything, listening to each other breathe in the grey silence.

 

*

 

Breaching the cloud-cover felt like pulling off his oxygen filter and finally breathing real air again. The transport broke into the blue sky beyond the oppressive blanket of grey and the sun streamed through the porthole window like warm liquid. His relief was palpable, though his guilt lingered; the problem wasn’t _gone_ just because he stopped looking at it, but he felt almost viciously glad to be away from it, to ignore it, even for a while. He was doing what humans did best. Turning a blind eye.

The sunlight refracted into tiny rainbows in the thin ice on the window as they gained altitude, and he watched the light shift over Gabe’s face, asleep, buckled into the seat on the opposite aisle.

His gut still ached with the silence of that hangar, but the sunlight was warming him through, and after all, he still had everything he needed. Gabe was here. The rest of their team was waiting for them at the Gibraltar base. They were warm, and whole, and he could forget, at least for now.

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when I research abandoned soviet military bases after bingeing on sad fics :)c  
> Semipalatinsk 21 - a real life soviet nuclear test ground near Kazakhstan.  
> Taiga Forest - a forest that covers most of the top half of Russia, collectively the size of China and India.  
> Hopefully this will become a series of pre-fall slice-of-life ficlets, but idk, I'm lazy.  
> First fic! Comments, Kudos and criticism appreciated :)


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